TURN OFF TV, TURN ON TO HOMEWORK

Castor wants parents to urge their children to turn off the television and do homework instead.

They should take her up on it.

A new study by the National Assessment on Educational Progress suggests that heavy TV-watching contributes to poor performance by Florida students on math tests.

The study found that on average about one in four Florida fourth-graders watches at least six hours of TV a day. The same is true for 15 percent of eighth-graders.

That's a lot of TV.

The average proficiency of those fourth-graders and eighth-graders who were the biggest TV watchers was lower than the national average.

The survey also concluded that students from homes where reading material was within easy reach had a higher math proficiency than those where newspapers, magazines and books weren't available to family members.

Many teachers insist that too much television has cut into students' studying time.

That's probably true.

A child who watches six hours of TV wouldn't have time to do much of anything else, other than eat and sleep.

But it's not up to teachers to make sure kids do their homework.

That's a parent's job and many parents in Florida apparently are failing.

They need to take a stand and just say no to heavy TV-watching.

It's bad enough that a large number of Florida children can't read or write when they leave elementary school. But it's even worse if they can't add or subtract either.